Please Pay Attention Before it’s You

CONTENT WARNING: Holocaust, mentions of nazism, etc. in this letter

Speech originally written and delivered to the South Side Area School District on March 14, 2023 after there were comparisons by the right at the meetings that Christians are “being hunted like the Jews”

As early as 1897, German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfield ran the 'Scientific-Humanitarian Committee' which advocated for LGBTQ+ rights.

In 1919, Hirschfield created the renowned Institute for Sexual Science. The institute pioneered research in gender, sexuality, transgender, and intersex topics.

More than 100 years ago, a collection of more than 40 doctors & specialists came to the conclusion that sex, gender, and sexuality are 3 separate components to a person.

The Institute offered licensed counseling, treatment and sex education–and all of this was free. The center had over 18,000 consultations in its first year. In 1921, Hirschfield was badly beaten in a hate crime in Munich. He carried on his work...

However, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933. Quickly, the nazis began to target queer spots, including the Institute for Sexual Science. On May 6, 1933, Nazis threw decades of research, over 12,000 books and all the belongings & artifacts of the Institute into the street and burned them.

Paragraph 175 was a German law that criminalized sexual relations between men. The Nazis escalated the law and beginning in 1935, Nazis started arresting “asocials”--which included homosexuals.

Approximately 90,000 men were given fixed prison sentences but approximately 15,000 men, however, were sent to concentration camps. Homosexuals were marked with pink triangles and this often subject the person to extreme punishment, sexual abuse and experimentation. Even if these men lived, they could not seek help for what happened to them because Paragraph 175 existed until May 1994.

Why do I mention the Nazis? At the pronoun committee meeting on 2/21/23, the biology teacher in question compared using someone’s proper pronouns to the marginalization that the Jews faced prior to the holocaust. He says it is blasphemous to his Christian religion.

***When someone of the world’s largest religion is saying that they are being persecuted by a minority group, pay attention.***

I had the privilege of traveling to Europe with this school district when I was 16. We went to Poland and visited Auschwitz. I read about the holocaust every year of my time at South Side, but nothing compares to being there and standing eye to eye with a portrait of a prisoner with a pink triangle and hearing that 80% of the known homosexuals who were in Auschwitz, died.

Marian Turski, a survivor of Auschwitz, gave a speech 3 years ago on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Turski said the Holocaust did not “fall from the sky” all at once but happened slowly as society’s acceptance of small acts of discrimination eventually led to ghettos and extermination camps.

Beware when people begin to "other" their neighbors. Just examining recent history:

-In 2016, they came for immigrants with a call to build a wall & eliminate DACA, and another to ban Muslims.

-Last year, the bodily autonomy of people who need abortion care were stolen. This also directly impacts those with disabilities that need certain treatments, medicines, etc.

-Killings by US police reached a record high in 2022 at about 100 people dead a month. Black people were 24% of those killed last year.

-“Don’t say gay” bills are being passed in more than a dozen states. More than 420 anti-LGBTQ+ bills are advancing, including civil rights, free speech, and healthcare.

-Transgender people are being persecuted. Just in 2022, over 300 anti-trans & anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed in state legislatures. In the past three years, over 20 new anti-trans bills have become law. News stations and social media accounts regularly run anti-trans stories. Prominent figures, celebrities and our community members are becoming more comfortable expressing their bigotry, and now we're considering enforcing one particular belief onto all others?

Please pay attention before it’s *you*.